Survey: Data Backup Still Lagging

Despite most IT pros having lost data in their careers, a significant percentage still don't prioritize backing up and testing that data. That's according to a study by CloudBerry Lab, an online backup and management vendor.

The survey was taken at the recent AWS re:Invent conference, which is a meeting for the Amazon Web Services Inc. audience. CloudBerry said in an e-mailed press release that its results were based on responses from "100 qualified IT professionals, including developers, architects and technical decision makers." They were from a cross-section of small and midsize businesses to large enterprises.

CloudBerry said that 88 percent of the respondents admitted losing data for various reasons, including malware, data corruption, hardware and others. But despite that figure, 38 percent "have never tested the recoverability of their backed-up data and 47 percent wait up to a month or more to back up," the release stated.

In another scary statistic, 32 percent of those surveyed said they either knew their company's data wasn't protected, or didn't know whether the backups were secured through such means as encryption, password protection or other methods.

That lackadaisical attitude extended to home networks, with half of the respondents saying they don't back up personal data because they "simply forget to do it."

About half of the respondents think that more than half of all digital information currently resides in the cloud. Nearly all -- 93 percent -- think that will be the case within the next half-decade.

Another finding is that tape is, basically, dead. Only 5 percent said they use tape or other removable media for backup.

About the Author

Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.